The letters of Mary Russell Mitford Author:Mary Russell Mitford Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Letters To Mrs. Ouvry. Three Mile Cross, , 1847. Ah! dearest Mrs. Ouvry, I know as well as if I were a clergyman's wife in my own person, all the flannel p... more »etticoating and blanketing of the Christmas season. It is the prime duty of a country gentlewoman ; and really this year the most that could be done for the poor people has fallen so far short of their wants, that homely as the task is it has been welcome to one's feelings, as all that one can feel sure of being useful (for a great deal of what passes for goodness is not so certain) always is just or best. I can well conceive that in a London parish, just installed, and not knowing familiarly either the sick or the poor, the job must have assumed an appearance half ludicrous in the midst of its sad importance. Are you likely to stay in town ? I do hope to be there for a week or two in the season, that is to say, the end of May or the beginning of June, and very glad should I be if I could expect to meet you there and to be introduced to Mr. Ouvry; you must make my best compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls, your own people, and my old neighbours also. The 's are still at Cheltenham, the 's going away for three years. This, I think, is all the country news. The people who know Mr. Browning well seem to VOL. II. G like him much. Mr. Kenyon, Mr. Chorley, Mr. Harness—and it is so much my interest to think well of him, and his dear wife writes of him so magnificently, that I hope in time to forgive even his stealing her away. I confess, however, quite between ourselves, that I can't make out his poetry. Do you ever meet in society a very charming young man, Mr. Ruskin, the author of some very fine works on art, by an Oxford graduate ? He is quite delightful. Three MUe Cross, April 11, 1847. I have been hopin...« less